Shakespearean patterns in Anne-Marie’s MacDonald’s Good night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)
Good night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is a comedic play written by the Canadian author Ann-Marie MacDonald in 1988. In her interpretation the writer used two original tragedies by William Shakespeare, namely The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice and The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and turned them into a delightful and engaging story about a subconscious journey of a modern female literature professor throughout the world of the Shakespearean plays. The adaptation of two classical tragic plots was turned into a comedy so that Shakespeare’s texts were incorporated with newer protagonists, details, and well-recognizable symbols within MacDonald’s play.
The writer uses a variety of Shakespearean themes, such as love, individual struggle against social patterns as well as one’s fight for happiness, and turns them into an allegory of human self-cognition in the contemporary world. In particular, MacDonald recurs to the Shakespearean tragic love theme as a structural plot of her comedy, regarding it from the perspective of self-discovery, in which classical heroes are regarded as archetypes in individual and collective subconscious minds. Originally, both Shakespeare’s tragedies are built on the theme of love interrupted by tragic circumstances. In Othello, the lovers are the Moore general Othello who falls in love with the Venice aristocrat Desdemona, marries her and brings to Cyprus where he serves as a military. In this play the love between two individuals is shown as sincere, deep and reciprocal. The relationship between
Othello and Desdemona convey Shakespeare’s important humanistic message on the liberty of human choice against the progressive epoch in comparison to strictly hierarchic and socially determined medieval context. As pointed by Lois Potter, this idea was conveyed at almost all classical performances of Othello (Potter 4-16). According to the dramaturge, everyone should be free in his choice of life and live. Thus, despite her youth, Desdemona is shown as a determined and self-sufficient woman ready to challenge outdated social patterns and stereotypes in her love and marriage with Othello. However, one of Othello’s enemies, Iago, is persuaded that this marriage is impossible due to unequal social statuses of the lovers (Moore Othello is seen as socially and ethnically different in the society of Venice) (Potter 5-12). Due to masterly planned evil intrigue, Iago incites unbearable jealousy in Othello who lacks self-confidence and trust in his wife so that the man affectively kills his beloved woman. In this specific case Iago can be seen as an embodiment of social prejudice that destroys the sincerity of human feelings and places a tragic insurmountable circumstance to personal self-fulfillment and harmony.
Likewise, in Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare conveys the same message. Social prejudices and human unpreparedness to break outdated feud lead to tragic deaths of lovers from the warring families (Muire, 86-89). Although Shakespeare’s lovers are young and inexperienced, they are ready to desperately fight for the right to choose their lives. Romeo is passionate …
